Bookends . . .

One of my favorite devices in movies, literature, and music is symmetry. This balance of the ending being the beginning is one that I've always admired when it's done well. Carl Orf's Carmina Burana. Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Ali With an I's Mixed Emotion There's this perfect resolve in their structure. There's something tragic, yet beautiful in any work that takes you somewhere, only to leave you back at the point you started. It turns the work into a parallel of Sisyphus' fate, and evokes the feeling that although we experienced or endured something great or daunting, we're no further along then we were at the start of our journey. Essentially, we went nowhere.

It was about a year ago that I posted this entry, about spending the better portion of a day in line at the auto pound. My Chevy Hydra (1 of 3, ever) had been taken in the night. The day served as as preview for what 2008 would be - 365 days of getting fucked. By the city. Work. DePaul. The Lorenz Curve. They each stood in a jailhouse chicken gang-bang line - my face held firmly in a forty-pound bag of rice that worked to silence my screams (the inmates knew I loved rice).

Two-Thousand Eight went down as one of the worst years I've ever seen. And the perfect Coda to it was realized two days ago as I stood at that same Auto Pound on Sacramento Avenue. Wearing the same Carhartt jacket, with the same worn checkbook in hand. The process of paying for my vehicle and getting out of there was rounding the fifth hour.

Historically speaking, Two-Thousand Eight will go down as one of the most fascinating in decades. We saw the collapse of globalized financial markets. The release of the most fully-realized Batman movie, yet. I ate two Philly Steak Sandwiches. And the guy I voted for, finally won. Alongside these events, I stood on the cusp of relationships, only to pour salt on them. Was ravaged by poisonous spiders, leading to a series of comical ER visits, and self-surgery sessions. Laid eyes on the world East of Chicago.

Yet in the end, here I am. In this same fucking line. In the same fucking clothes. No further along at the end of 2008, then at it's beginning.